Joshua Mok

Lately, I have conversed with many Baby Boomers about the topic of Generation Y (a.k.a. Millennial Generation), and their perspectives are generally the same – they are lazy, hard to understand, irresponsible, impulsive, spoiled, and ultimately doomed!

The conclusion to all of these conversations ended on a similar note agreeing that there are multiple factors resulting to the downfall of this generation. Here is my theory on what is happening with this current generation.

It is unfair to apply the above criticism to the entire Gen Y population. Of course, there are Gen Y’s who are very hard working and high achievers, but they reach a quarter-life crisis and end up losing their confidence along with their hopes and dreams.

Before reaching the age of 20, everyone shares a similar fate.  They attend class together in school, have little to no job experience, and live a carefree lifestyle with the support of their parents. Before graduation, they are self-confident and share the ambition to achieve groundbreaking accomplishments in their field of study.

However, once they enter the workforce, they realize most of the things they learned in school are not applicable and are faced with new challenges such as organizational politics that opposes their ambitions. As a result, they slowly lose their motivational drive to turn their dreams into reality and instead decide to settle for the comfort and stability of a typical 9-to-5 job.

I believe many Gen Y’s are faced with this situation today. They are experiencing a shock from their realization of the difference between dreams and reality, and this becomes a critical moment in their life to determine whether they will continue to pursue their dreams, delay their dreams, change their dreams, or to abandon their dreams.

Here’s my advice to the Gen Y population:

First of all, they will need to understand both their own interests and ambitions. Why do people work? They work in order to achieve their goals whether it is for money, fame, status, achievement, or any other goals. The work must also be aligned with your interest. If you are not interested in your work, then you doing nothing more than menial tasks in order to accomplish your ambitions. On the other hand, if you are pursuing your interest without any ambition, then you are just taking an interest in a hobby rather than doing work. Both interests and ambitions are necessary for a successful career development.

Secondly, they must realize that no one in this world will give success to you as a gift. Success is something that must be earned. The earlier you realize your interests and ambitions, then the earlier you can determine an action or career plan, then the better prepared you will be for the road ahead of you.

The disappointing truth is that there are very limited resources before your quarter-life crisis to help you with this. The educational system needs to more involved in helping students to connect with mentors and to arrange for job shadowing or internship opportunities. The workforce needs to be more tolerant toward entry level professionals by listening to their creative input or by providing more opportunities by taking more initiatives in leadership.

In the end, if this generation really is considered as a downfall, it is only the result of the entire integrated economic, systematic, and educational framework. On the other hand, maybe they should just play less video game and do their homework instead.

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